3.6 – Dalek Empire III – The Future

Galanar, Elaria and the Graxis Wardens set course for Kalendorf’s home planet, Velyshaa, where they will stand or fall.

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Tanlee
on May 7, 2016 at 8:32 PM

Review of Series 3

“Peace is a powerful drug, it enshrines fear in nobility.”

This third series was going to be redundant before anyone put pen to paper (not least because Kalendorf is a hard hero to replace), and ultimately it’s hard to see what Dalek Empire III has done that the previous two hadn’t already done better. The story of Dalek Empire was effectively over with the main cast killed off, the Daleks repelled, and more importantly with the Emperor and Dalek Supreme dead and the Kar Charrat data dying with them, the Daleks were going to be back to Terry Nation’s useless automatons and incapable of conquering a galaxy or carrying a series. But now with Susan reincarnated into the female Dalek Supreme, this conclusion is rapidly undone as the character is prolongued way past her natural conclusion and the Daleks get an insight into the human mind again. But even more contrived is how Siy Tarkov’s datastore that he was going to deliver to the Galactic Union at the end of Dalek War, gets lost in transit so he has to go back to Veleyshaa for a second copy. This is just the story blatantly standing still and admitting it can’t go forward.

The chief complaint of Dalek Empire III is that it didn’t have a proper conclusion. Though it’s more accurate to say that it didn’t give us the conclusion we wanted, and certainly not the one we were promised by some unspoken agreement that each series has to end with the galaxy changed forever. We expected that there’d be a followup to the approaching Dalek threat. Instead what we got was the Dalek threat still approaching and the characters spending six discs talking about it and then being all killed off. But this is in many ways a character based story, not a plot based story which ends in an ouroboros way of the storyteller telling his story of how he came to this point of telling the story (which is perhaps why having other narrators to crowd the story was maybe a mistake), the point was meant to be about coming to terms with a perpetually conflict based universe and learning to cultivate your own state of personal nirvana despite that.

In the first Dalek Empire series, a television satellite network really did spread the message of revolution and stirred the blood of the masses into overwhelming and devastating action. But maybe that was speaking for a more 60’s generation that’s gone by, and if this season is more a reflection of our fast-paced, anxiety-driven modern age, then maybe the ending in which the truth is brought forward but it really doesn’t look like its going to make any difference or anyone’s going to take any notice seems perfectly true to our world where no-one cares about the truth anymore. Where we’ve gotten comfortable with the fact that government and corporations are corrupt and where there was little point caring less whether Iraq really did have those Weapons of Mass Destruction or not.

As for the Dalek threat, as fans we know that Dalek wars will come and go, but humanity will ultimately prevail. All the Whoniverse timeline books tell us so. Doctor Who takes place in a universe that is ‘known’ to the fans. The ambiguity of Dalek Empire III’s conclusion, coupled with its portrayal of humanity as a more or less cursed race is something to shake that ‘knowing’ audience up a bit and remind them of a time back in the Hartnel era when the future of the Doctor Who universe wasn’t so certain, and so we’re left with a real believable sense that the end of the universe really is nigh, for the first time since Logopolis, so we’re not sure whether it’s a work of genius or a cheap cheat that we’re never told what happens next.

Looking at the first and last chapter together, it’s clear that it was meant to end this way. The story begins on Veleyshaa with the Dalek advance forewarned, and ends back on Veleyshaa where the Daleks finally arrive. It began with Siy Tarkov hearing a Dalek transmission and ends with him being tortured long distance by the Dalek Supreme. His discussion with the Dalek Spureme about the future of mankind becoming more militaristic and insular is a perfect sharp, bleak antithesis to the Doctor’s optimistic view of how the Dalek threat might unify different alien cultures. It’s also well suited to the torture scene which in Orwellian fashion presents a literal ‘boot stamping on a human face forever’ vision of the future- a raw and tangible microcosm for the war and battle of unyielding wills to come. It’s as if Siy has been trying to get these words out all the way through the season, and it’s fitting that for a bereaved father like Siy Tarkov, his chief thought is for the youths who’ll be drafted to fight this war (it’s truly saddening to compare this level of characterisation with what comes after in Dalek Empire IV). The ending for the Wardens is also an ironic one, in keeping with Nick’s ecological themes, as these environmentalists who were well pitched against a mechanised eco-menace like the Daleks, are ultimately tracked down and beaten when the Daleks pollute their fuel tanks to leave a smog trail.

Perhaps what’s missing is that the excess material in between interrupts the relentlessness, as the Daleks are allowed to chase too many tangents. This is far less tight than the previous series. Plus after two seasons of being near enough invincible, the Daleks are suddenly turned into easy canon fodder, and that alone makes the series feel considerably more mediocre and lazy than its predecessors.

The ‘friendship’ theme is somewhat picked at random and overstated, but good performances and chemistry coupled with a sharp ear for naturalistic dialogue make it work. The more compelling theme however is that of cults, which harks back to Nick’s original Audio Visuals version of The Mutant Phase. The orphaned Elaria imprints on the Daleks as her surrogate parents. Kaymee does the same when she starts mutating into a Dalek, and disconnects from her real father in the same way that brainwashed young scientologists often do with their parents. Elaria and Galanar have the mesmerising power to convince someone that a lie is the truth, and Carneil is in denial of the Dalek’s massacres even though he saw it with his own eyes. This is the closest that Dalek Empire gets to really going for the Daleks-equal-Nazis angle, and asking the question of how ordinary German people could blind themselves to the evils of the new regime, and reduces the answer to a matter of simple human nature, presenting it in such an instinctive way that the audience immediately gets it. No-one wants to believe the worst, especially when it’s staring them in the face. The Galactic Union and Carneill of course are the Neville Chamberlain-type appeasers of the equation (mind you Carneill’s appeasment is nowhere near as snide and despicable as the Doctor’s was in Warriors of the Deep and Last of the Time Lords).

There’s been much criticism of the scenes where Frey Saxton or Siy Tarkov ask themselves whether it’s right or wrong for humanity to go to war with the Daleks, when there really isn’t a moral dilemma there at all- we know that the Daleks curing the plague isn’t worth the price of appeasement. But that perhaps misses the point because the dialogue isn’t trying to raise moral questions that we already know the answers to, it’s showing up the all too human reaction of being reluctant to accept that their enemy is that evil, or that war with them is so inescapeable. It’s about the desperation to hang onto any tenuous clues to reinforce the comforting belief that the Daleks can’t really be that bad. This is about the gift of trust, the human instinct to seek kindred spirits and the inability for us to truly accept the existence of the truly soulless or evil.

The problem is that this theme curtails a lot of the dramatic impact and horror. Quite simply Dalek Empire has now exhausted its power to shock and disturb. The horror and tragedy of the plague itself is never remotely conveyed, and simply seems like a hollow, unsustainable attempt to up the ante and the scale with ludicrous statistics, and by now it’s simply become something that’s taken for granted. When Dalek Empire first began, leaving the listener with that kind of apathetic reaction would have been unthinkable. Part of the problem is that as indicated, the story contrives the naivety of its human cast, and obfuscates in other ways to hide the obvious fact that the Daleks are behind the plague, so it never conveys a sense of malice or moral outrage. Indeed the main purpose of the Susan/Dalek hybrid seems to be to provide a red herring. A possibility that it’s Susan’s lingering compassion that’s motivating the Daleks to suddenly become medical missionaries, which only shows up how much more interesting the story could have been if that road was actually taken.

But no, when Siy Tarkov is cured, it leads to disturbing consequences and we realise there’s no moral dilemma here, no greater good to come from the Daleks’ healing zones. Siy Tarkov never exhibited the kind of sins or fatal flaws that Susan did, yet he is still cursed to suffer endless horrors, one after another. What just about prevents his suffering from seeming like a manipulative parade of pain is that each punishment tells us something about this galaxy and its history. He catches the plague from a pit stop in the border worlds, has his ship raided by impoverished scavengers which paints a picture of a desperate and lawless cosmos, his impeded speech is a metaphor for the stifled articulation of the individual under a bureaucratic state, and even his wife’s death in a skimmer accident is linked to the way technology and space travel has regressed in the great catastrophe. His scenes trapped from within a protective suit are both symbolic of being born from the womb and foreshadow his fate in a Dalek machine (same is true of Kaymee who begins the story in her space suit) so there’s an existential fatalism at work too. Even the last words of Siy’s opening distress transmission could, in dramatic irony be mistaken for Dalek rhetoric. But still, the effect is numbing more than anything and ultimately leaves you not caring, and this desensitisation extends into other areas of the story.

The same is true of the Dalek advance on Veleysha. It’s brilliantly led up to with a wonderful sense of the ticking clock. As a sequence, on the one hand it provides a wonderful microcosm of the Dalek’s advance and their conformist multiplicity that’s happening all over the Border Worlds. And it’s an amusing subversion of the mundane in that the fate of the galaxy effectively comes down to a ruck on a derelict council estate. But even that kind of absurd comical juxtaposition that’s unique to Doctor Who feels misjudged here. It practically glorifies the Daleks and the action on the battlefield by reducing it to a music video for Dalek Empire’s remixed theme tune. It’s ultimately too comical and cool to be haunting or disturbing and feels somewhat wrongheaded in the way it undermines Dalek Empire’s devastating anti-war message.

The prolongued length of two extra discs made it feel for many like a cynical cash in on an ended story that’s being forcibly prolongued long enough to get six CD sales out of it. But actually that’s rather harsh. There is an enthusiasm and love in the writing. It’s done well and retains the same timeless accessibility to newcomers as the previous two series’, and infact for the first three discs it doesn’t put a noticeable foot wrong, but it’s also done by numbers, and despite the odd lingering personal anxieties and unresolved demons from the previous two series, there’s a sense that it’s no longer quite the labour of love it once was. No, more than that, it’s deeply undisciplined in its manipulative tactics to the point where it lacks focus or direction. It’s asking provocative questions but it wilfully refuses to give any answers, which leaves a rather hollow aftertaste once the sense of spectacle dies down, and makes the whole thing just seem unfinished and overblown. Without a lid on the whole thing to pull the threads together, it’s just a sitting duck for nitpicking. But really the best way to view Dalek Empire III is to see it as being almost a TV serial following on from the more cinematic previous two Dalek Empires. This is a more episodic series, and uses environments and characters more akin to television than cinema, like conservationist wardens and hospital staff. The final two chapters inparticular feel more akin to a Dalek-led TV series, and the finale feels like a season finale right down to the mystic ruins setting. Hence it’s less chaotic, more talky, features characters who are contrived to be less effectual and more in the dark, and instead of running consistent themes to their conclusion, it picks them up along the way and doesn’t quite know what to do with them. But judged on that criteria it’s far better and more heartfelt than we have any right to expect.

David Tennant puts in an excellent animated performance as Galanar, playing a compellingly slippery and duplicitous character who becomes an unlikely representation of the story’s theme of empathy, unfortunately though he’s no Kalendorf which means that he doesn’t really grapple with and direct the plot so much as complacently let the plot lead him to the clearly marked end point. Laura Rees is delightfully enthusiastic as Kaymee and wins the listener over in a manner that defies her sci-fi ‘token annoying teen’ role, and her shrewd point about how ‘animals sense danger’ actually defines this story’s theme about trusting our natural instincts. Steven Elder puts everything into his performance as the desperate and heavily tested Siy Tarkov, and really makes the character’s hysteria work whilst a lesser actor would probably have failed that acid-test. Ishia Bennison shows real admirable guts as the wonderfully curmudgeonly Commander Saxton, although her male aides are interchangeably bland. William Gaunt as Georgi Selestru is on fine form but he deserved to do far more than sit behind a desk for six discs. Sarah Mowat is especially effective in her monologue as Susan as she describes her revenge on the Daleks with deliciously cold hearted glee and satisfaction. As the Dalek Supreme she’s called upon to be ridiculously all over the place, from whisperful to over the top shrieking, but she just about manages to make that erratic, ridiculous quality clearly deceptive of her true power and danger, and in selected moments she manages to be such a believable threat that her final claims of Dalek victory being assured sound almost informed by future sight.

Special mention must go to Claudia Elmhurst as the Dalek’s familiar Elaria who manages to draw pathos from the confused character who was adopted by the Daleks and is slave to her own nature. She inspires sympathy because she is presented like an abused child whose behaviour is authentically symptomatic of experiences of abuse, such as adoptive behaviour, compulsive lying, crisis of identity, an inexplicable attachment to her parents, suicidal tendencies and a death wish and a devious talent for manipulation- something that many abused children develop early on with frightening speed, both from experiencing manipulation first hand from their abuser, and as a survival mechanism in order to win support from an unsympathetic justice system and a family unit that tends to lapse into denial in such shocking circumstances (this also has an allegory in the bureaucratic obtuseness of the Galactic Union and the alienating lack of social cohesion in this galaxy). She initially displays the kind of confident, pro-active shrewdness, ingenuity and adaptability that would make a good Doctor Who companion, which makes the twist concerning her character all the more subversive. So good is her performance and her mask of deceit that she still manages to convince as Siy’s daughter even after her lie has been exposed. She superbly manages an intricate, believable performance within a performance, and she also plays her final scene with a death-wish rawness that is genuinely terrifying. She’s sympathetic yet utterly creepy in a way that most female characters don’t get to be in today’s sex driven TV. She also has a wonderful mirrored dynamic with Galanar, and together they bring to this ensemble the kind of mentally defective misfits that made Blakes’ 7 far richer and more diverse in characterisation than most other sci-fi series. Indeed she shares a better dynamic with Tennant than any of the New Who companions have so far.

There’s a lot to admire and reappraise about Dalek Empire III and certainly at the time it was much preferable to the main range’s Divergent universe arc, but it’s clearly where the Dalek Empire franchise hit a dead end. Unfortunately Dalek Empire III’s legacy is that it ultimately led to a three year hiatus for Dalek Empire, and then it came back as a prequel series, completely disassociated from Dalek Empire III’s conclusion. It’s a shame it bore the brunt of such criticism that apparently now, not even its own writer would touch Dalek Empire III with a bargepole.

I appreciated what Nicholas Briggs did with the fourth and final part of “Dalek War.” He recast the events of the previous three audios as part of a larger, grander, more mythological narrative, redefining the Daleks in the process as a nebulous evil force rather than a specific race of conquerors. Briggs tries a similar strategy here in “The Future,” but it doesn’t succeed, as it bears almost no connection to the five plays which preceded it. As the nature of the Dalek plan is fully revealed — the Daleks spread a devastating plague, then arrive offering help, and cure it by turning victims into more Daleks, thus building their army — we’re given a conflict of philosophy: do the Daleks need to become human in order to achieve true success? Is the conversion of humans into Daleks a means to achieve this, or just a grotesque perversion of the truth? Will humanity need to become more Dalek-like in order to defeat the Daleks? If so, then is Dalek conversion just another means to an end? Or will the Dalek invasion lead to a stronger, more unified human race? All of these questions are posed in the final half-hour, and all are left open-ended. This is intelligent, thought-provoking material, but why was it saved until now? There hasn’t been a moment of moral ambiguity thus far — even the question of whether a plague cure is worth a Dalek alliance is definitely given a negative response, since all the plague survivors are forcibly converted into Daleks. None of this is helped by a sudden streak of brutal fatalism, as Briggs rapidly dispatches the entire regular cast (including a rather poor scene of overdramatic battlefield shouting), culminating in Tarkov’s forcible conversion. I’ve heard this compared to Blake’s 7, and it’s nowhere close — this is obfuscation for the sake of it. You can’t spend fourteen plays portraying the Daleks as the ultimate evil and then throw your hands into the air and declare “it’s all ambiguous!” It’s an unnecessary, unsatisfying cheap trick. Which, come to think of it, is a fairly apt description of “Dalek Empire III” as a whole.